The Pride of East 103rd Street

Their early restraint gave way to later splurging. With leftover cash, they upgraded the pixelated facade from concrete board to Trespa, a tough laminate that’s easier to clean (and much sharper looking), and replaced some of the clear windows with acid-etched glass, which transmits a soft, translucent glow. The latter choice pleased Hageman, who worried that too much transparency would sacrifice students’ privacy. Indoors, they replaced standard-issue institutional floors with sound-absorbing carpet and recycled-rubber flooring. Afterward, there was still $520,000 left over, which Gluck returned to the school for its then-nascent endowment. The firm also played real estate consultant, leaving a school-owned vacant lot that’s hard by the new building and can be sold or developed. (Today it’s an outdoor basketball court.) These are the particulars that elevate the East Harlem School from a meat-and-potatoes operation to a sacred place. Gluck calls it his “extended service.” Others might call it humane.

Not that it was all moonlight and roses. Gluck’s camp feuded with the school over security and privacy, with Hageman and his staff generally favoring more of both. The entrance, which carves gently into the school, was supposed to be a welcoming gesture to both the students and the surroundings. Hageman feared it would be too welcoming. (The front door of the old building was a popular urinal.) Weeks into construction, Hageman started stumping for a fence. The architects pushed back, insisting that it would actually invite vandalism. “We felt strongly from other projects we’ve done that once a project like this is built, the neighborhood will take care of the school,” Gluck says. “If you try to put barriers like that up, they’ll try to break them down.” He was right. The school has been open a year without a trace of graffiti. No bricks have gone barreling through its windows. And its entrance remains, auspiciously, urine-free.

 
“We didn’t smile at our first meeting,” Hageman says. We’re perched in his office, surrounded by low-set Eames and Modernica furniture, as a photographer arranges equipment for a shoot. Gluck is here too, and later he will join the students in the gym for circle, huddling among them in silence while their classmate ritualistically bangs the bowl. “Peter didn’t at least,” Hageman goes on. “I probably did.”

“I didn’t,” Gluck says.

The project was a pairing of titanic personalities, and their polarity produced something extraordinary. Gluck’s method made it possible. By cutting out the waste and the various compromises of traditional construction, design-build allowed for clarity of vision in a sector that desperately needs it. School architecture has always been an expression of institutional aspirations, which makes it especially depressing to visit urban schools. Each crumbling wall or shoddy portable classroom bears aloft the failure of the education system. The rare exceptions have nothing to do with students and everything to do with the swaggering architects who designed them. (Consider Coop Himmelb(l)au’s $232 million “waterslide to nowhere” in downtown L.A.) The East Harlem School doesn’t scream or whimper. It articulates a youthful audacity that does justice to its founder, mission, history, and surroundings. “These guys are like my architectural gurus,” Hageman says, referring to Wong and Gee. “And Peter’s the Dalai Lama.”

Both Wong and Gluck ended up spending more time at the school than they expected. Wong, 37, tutors students on Saturdays. Gluck joined the board of trustees and has recruited several speakers for the school’s Friday lecture series, including his wife, who teaches Asian studies at Columbia University. “Here the school is like a family, so it’s very easy to get committed,” he says, caught in a rare moment of sentiment. A few minutes later, Hageman’s Dalai Lama pads into the school’s bright-yellow lobby and through those ungated front doors, and descends onto a restless East 103rd Street, which now sits contentedly in the shadow of his school. From the street, the building manages to look both stately and inviting. It walks with kings, yet keeps the common touch.

 
Correction: Two sentences in the online version of this story have been modified to better describe Hans Hagemen’s role at the East Harlem School at Exodus House. The original story described Hans as a “back-of-the-house bureaucrat” who has “since taken on other nonprofit work.” In fact, as executive director of the school, Hans was not only responsible for finance and operations, among other duties, but he also taught some classes. Subsequently, he served for eight years as the executive director of Boys & Girls Harbor, an education nonprofit with longstanding ties to the Harlem community.